Semicolon Fascinations: News and Links

Oct7

Jay Parini reviews Tinkers, the Pulitzer-prize winning novel by Paul Harding, in The Guardian. I’m torn. The fact that Mr. Harding was a student of Marilynne Robinson is promising, but the comparisons to Faulkner are off-putting. I never have been able to slow myself down enough to ramble along Southern lanes with Faulkner. Would I find the ramblings of a Maine tinker any more accessible?

Instructions for a walking tour along the middle Thames downstream from Oxford. Doesn’t walking or bicycling along this route, where Kenneth Grahame was inspired to write The Wind in the Willows and Jerome K. Jerome set his Three Men in a Boat, sound absolutely delightful? I’d probably get lost or poop out, but on (virtual) paper it seems inviting.

Stephen R. Lawhead (author of Hood, Byzantium, and other beloved novels) has a new book out, The Skin Map. It came out on September 1, and I had no idea. The Skin Map is the beginning of a new series of fantasy novels, called Bright Empires, which ultimately will consist of five books. The concept sounds a little bit like LOST in its exploration of time travel and alternate realities. The second volume, The Bone House has a publication date of September, 2011. I think I’ll restrain myself at least until then. I dislike reading the first book in a series and then waiting a year to read the next one. If you’ve never read an books by Lawhead, and if you’re fond of things Celtic and somewhat historical/fantastical, I would suggest either Byzantium, my favorite, or the King Raven Trilogy about Robin Hood, beginning with Hood. His King Arthur books are good, too.

When homeschooling and nonsensical bureaucracy conflict. Why can’t this 15 year old boy play water polo with a high school club? Well, it’s mostly because the adults involved don’t want to make a decision in case someone gets something wrong. We had a situation similar to this one when Eldest Daughter first went to college at Baylor. The officials at Baylor were afraid to admit her because she would celebrate her eighteenth birthday a few days after school started. And seventeen year olds fell under different rules relating to supervision and financial aid. It was ridiculous, and we finally got it worked out. But it was a bureaucratic mess for a while.

A pastor’s list of 99 books that made my first 50 years worth living. I liked his list and may add some of the books on the list to my TBR list.

YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults nominations. I wish I could read all of these in addition to all the Middle Grade Fiction nominees that I’m going to be reading. So many books, so little time.

Emily’s Fortune by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Oct6

Emily was an orphan. A very quiet orphan without much experience in navigating the great, wide world.

Rufus was Emily’s pet turtle.

Emily’s Aunt Hilda lived in Redbud, and she had a kind face, a warm lap, and big arms that hugged Emily tight. Aunt Hilda also sent cookies at Christmas.

Emily’s Uncle Victor is the villain of the piece. He had “the silver-black of a wolf, the eyes of a weasel, the growl of a bear, and tiger tattoo on his arm.” He also had “a gold tooth that gleamed when he opened his mouth, and he could crack two walnuts in the palm of one hand just by squeezing his fist. He never came to see Emily’s mother unless he wanted money.”

Which of those two relatives would you go to live with if your parents were dead?

Of course, so Emily sets out for Redbud on the stage coach, escaping from the Catchum Child-Catching Services (Orphans, Strays, and Roustabouts Rounded Up Quickly). She soon makes a friend, Jackson, who’s also on the run from the Catchum Child Catching Services.

This story, set in the Old West, is a rip-snortin’, shootin’ shivers, hunky munky, ding-dong dickens tall tale. Each chapter ends in a cliff-hanger and with a question, for example:

And what in blinkin’ bloomers do you think she saw?

What in pickin’ poppies could possibly happen next?

Now what in a devil’s doughnut should Emily do?

I loved this story, just exciting and suspenseful enough for nine, ten, and eleven year olds, but not too scary and horrible. I hope to read this book aloud to Z-baby, and I predict that she’s going to be a fan. For one thing, Z-baby will like the chapter endings/transition questions because she likes to make up her own words and ask lots of crazy questions.

The Kneebone Boy by Ellen Potter

Oct5

Dashes of Dahl. Snippets of Snicket. Heaps of Horvath. Those are the comparisons on the back of the ARC of this rather gothic middle grade adventure novel that I read breathlessly to the end in one day.

I would add: A modicum of Monty Python. Pinches of The Princess Bride (without the kissing). Even a bit of Joan Aiken’s Wolves of WIlloughby Chase.

So I’m not as good with the alliteration as the blurb writer. I do have three questions after reading about the strange and abnormal Hardscrabble children, Otto, Lucia, and Max, and their adventure in Snoring-by-the-Sea:

1. What is lurgy?

2. Will Otto ever talk?

3. Do British children really hate peanut butter and jelly (jam, not jello) sandwiches, and if so, what do they eat when there’s no food in the house except for PBJ?

If you can answer these questions and if you’ve already read The Kneebone Boy, you probably figured out the ending to the story long before I did –especially since I didn’t figure it out until the end when our helpful narrator who shall remain unnamed told us exactly what was what and who was who. I loved the chapter titles, such as:
In which the Hardscrabbles worry about the title of this book and other things.

In which something awful happens but I can’t say what it is.

In which Max’s educated guess had better be right or else Lucia and Otto are going to throttle him.

However, it must be said that those sorts of titles don’t really give away much about what’s going to happen in any particular chapter, much less how the book is going to end. Anyway, it also won’t hurt to tell that The Kneebone Boy has no vampires, no magic, only one very small ghost, one large castle and one small play castle, lots of adventure, many oddities, and a few crazies. Also, there’s not much blood, and lots of stuff happens at night . . . in the dark . . . in a spooky forest.Oh, and there’s a dungeon and a secret passageway.

If all that doesn’t convince you to pick a copy of The Kneebone Boy and start reading now, you obviously aren’t like Lucia who “wished something interesting would happen” and read lots of novels. Nor are you the Max-type, Max being the youngest Hardscrabble “who always thought he knew better” and thought “deeply and importantly.” You might be like Otto, the oddest of the Hardscrabble children. Otto, who never spoke out loud, only communicated with his own special sign language, and generally wanted to go home to Little Tunks instead of continuing on a dangerous and exciting adventure.

Now if that paragraph didn’t get you, nothing will.

Finding My Place by Traci L. Jones

Oct4

I graduated high school in 1975, the year in which this story takes place. So I loved all the cultural references to TV shows like Barney Miller and Sanford and Son, to songs like Monster Mash and Stairway to Heaven, and to political and social events and entities like the Black Panthers and maxi skirts and hippie communes. But the characters themselves eventually felt flat and unconvincing in spite of all the time period references and slang-sprinkled dialog.

Tiphanie Jayne Baker is the one who’s “finding her place” in a nearly all-white high school in the suburbs of Denver, Colorado. Her parents have made it in the business world–dad’s a banker and mom’s a real estate broker–so they are moving into the house to match the income, out of the predominantly black part of town and into the ritzy white suburbs. Tiphanie has to transfer to a new high school where there’s only one other black student, a boy named Bradley. At first, no one even speaks to Tiphanie or acknowledges her presence, but that situation changes as she makes friends with social outcast, Jackie Sue Webster, and then eventually others in the school begin to notice that Tiphanie is a real person and not just the token black girl.

Unfortunately, it’s at the point that Tiphanie is finally beginning to feel somewhat accepted by the kids at school, except for a couple of garden variety racist idiots, that the story of the friendship between Tiphanie and Jackie Sue takes a turn for the oversimplified and stereotypical. Stop here if you’re not in the mood for spoilers. Jackie Sue’s mom is a former beauty queen, unwed mother, dumb blonde, now alcoholic and abusive mess. Could one possibly impose any more poor white trash stereotypes onto one character? Oh, yeah, Jackie Sue and her mom live in a trailer park, of course.

At the beginning of the story Jackie Sue with her impressive vocabulary and her observational skills was an interesting character. Then she somehow turned into a cliche. Tiphanie, although she’s smart and witty, hovers on the edge of stereotype with her parents lecturing her about upholding the good image of the Afro-American race and her friends accusing her of becoming too white, an Oreo. But whereas Tiphanie feels almost real, and her parents kind of snooty but also believable, Jackie Sue and especially her mom are just a plot device for Tiphanie to learn from and for the reader to get the message that some white people have poverty-stricken, dysfunctional lives that are worse than the lives of upwardly mobile blacks.

Read for a taste of the seventies, if you want one, but not for the realistic characterization.

Other views:
The HappyNappyBookseller: “I really enjoyed Finding My Place. It was a quick, fun and entertaining read. Jones knows how to write a good story and great dialogue.”

The Fourth Musketeer: “In this novel, Traci Jones examines serious issues of prejudice with a terrific sense of humor–I laughed out loud at numerous places in the novel. She explores overt prejudice against blacks . . . but also more subtle types of prejudice.”

Bookish Blather: “As her friendship with Jackie Sue grows, Tiphanie finds herself wrestling with her values, and the values of her family. I loved reading about Tiphanie. She’s smart, funny and witty, and a compassionate person.”

And, again, I am in the minority. Try it if you’re interested and see what you think.

How To Change a Life: Two YA Fiction Gems

Oct2

Somebody Everybody Listens To by Suzanne Supplee.

The Heart Is Not a Size by Beth Kephart.

These are two very different books with a common theme: how does a young woma grow up, get past or through her issues and problems and imperfections, and change her life— and the lives of those around her?

In Somebody Everybody Listens To, Retta Lee Jones is a singer with a dream; she wants to go to Nashville and somehow sing songs that will be on the radio where everybody will listen to her music. It’s not so much that Retta wants to become rich or famous, although living somewhere besides the old car she drives to Nashville would be a welcome change. Retta just wants someone to listen to her, someone besides her best friend Brenda. She wants to escape her unhappy home and her estranged parents and become her own person. And as unlikely as it seems, Nashville and the country music scene become her path to adulthood.

It’s a good story that doesn’t pull many punches about the danger and the improbability of even tying to make it as a singer in Nashville. Retta Lee meets drunks and bitter wannabes and lecherous men and star-struck teenagers. But she also makes friends with Ricky Dean, the tow-truck driver who fixes her car and gives her a job, and Emerson Foster, a student at Vanderbilt who becomes Retta’s encourager, and even Chat, the skeptic whose harsh criticism will test Retta’s resolve. Any girl who plans to “make it in the music business” should be given a copy of this book along with some sage advice. However, as Dolly Parton once said, ” You’ll never do a whole lot unless you’re brave enough to try.”

Bravery and taking a chance on a dream are also the themes of Beth Kephart’s newest book, The Heart Is Not a Size. This one felt a little weird to me because it’s about two girls, Georgia and her best friend Riley, on a mission trip (or a good works trip) to Juarez, Mexico. I’ve been to Juarez, and although I’ve never worked in that city, I have been on several mission trips to other border towns, Nuevo Laredo, Matamoros, and Acuña. I’ve worked in the hot summer Mexican sun, and I’ve been to the colonias, the poverty-stricken villages that grow up around Mexican border cities. So a lot of what Ms. Kephart was writing about was familiar, and yet there were distinct differences from my own experiences.

The group of teens in Ms. Kephart’s book, who were working to build a neighborhood bathroom and shower facility in a poor colonia called Anapra, were working with a secular group called GoodWorks, loosely associated with a church in Mexico, but with no Christian focus. I kept expecting the young people in the book to come together in the evening and pray for each other and for the success of their work in Anapra. I kept expecting them to turn to God for help in understanding themselves and their relationships with each other and with the villagers. But Georgia and Riley and the other teens just continued to dig down deep within themselves and to pull out inner resources that they didn’t know they had.

In fact, as I think about it, the message of both of these books seems to be that if you need to change, if your life is going in the wrong direction, dig deep and pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, maybe with a little help from your friends. In fact, in Somebody Everybody Listens To, a preacher gives that exact message, telling a funeral congregation: ” . . . you are the one that’s got to change yourself. The good Lord just cheers you on.” And in A Heart Is Not a Size, Georgia just has herself: “I wasn’t letting anything else get in my way–not the dogs, not the dust, not myself, not the blackbird that banged in the place of my heart. I wasn’t going to be beat by panic. Not this time.”

Wonderful stories, but ultimately a discouraging message. What if you don’t have the inner resources to change yourself? What if your friends desert you? What if God seems more like an angry judge than a cheerleader? What’s the message for those of us who fail and fail again and finally can’t even get up off the ground?

But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. ~Ephesians 2:4-10

A friend of mine was quoting someone not long ago, and she said something like, “Jesus didn’t come to make bad people good; he came to bring dead people to life.” There’s a corollary to that statement: We can’t save ourselves by working really, really hard. If God’s not more than a cheerleader, if He’s not a saviour, we’re a bunch of dead ducks.

Books to Nominate for Cybils 2010

Oct1

Here’s my list of books that I think ought to be nominated for the Cybils. I’m going to keep adding to this list between now and October 15th, and I’ll note those books that have been nominated.

Young Adult Fiction:
Beautiful by Cindy Martinusen-Coloma. Published by Thomas Nelson, November, 2009. Nominated.

Exposure by Mal Peet. Published by Candlewick, October 13, 2009. Semicolon review here. Note the Oct.13, 2009 publication date. I’m wondering if we could get a dispensation from the powers that be for this book since I don’t see how anyone could have read it and nominated it last year in the two days that were available before the Oct. 15th cut-off. date. It’s a really good book.

Bamboo People by Mitali Perkins. Published by Charlesbridge, July, 2010. Semicolon review here. Nominated.

Hush by Eishes Chayil. Published by Walker and Company, September, 2010. Semicolon review here.

Diamond Ruby by Joseph Wallace. Published by Simon and Schuster, May, 2010. Semicolon review here. Nominated, not eligible.

The Heart Is Not a Size by Beth Kephart. Published by HarperTeen, 2010. Nominated.

Somebody Everybody Listens To by Suzanne Supplee. Published by Dutton Books, 2010. Nominated.

Cate of the Lost Colony by Lisa Klein. Semicolon review here. Nominated.

The Fiddler’s Gun by Andrew Peterson. Published by Rabbit Room Press, December 1, 2009. Nominated.

Jump by Elisa Carbone. Semicolon review here.

Forge by Laurie Halse Anderson. Semicolon review here. Whoops: The publication date is October 19th. I guess this one will have to wait for next year. Nominated in MG fiction?

No and Me by Delphine de Vigan. Translated from the French by George Miller. Published in English by Bloomsbury, August, 2010.

Middle Grade Fiction:
Cosmic by Frank Cottrell Boyce. Cosmic Published by Walden Pond Press (an imprint of Harper Collins), January 19, 2010. Semicolon review here. Nominated in the Science Fiction/Fantasy category, which I guess is where it belongs.

The Reinvention of Edison Thomas by Jacqueline Houtman. Semicolon review here. Nominated.

Emily’s Fortune by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor. Published by Delacourte Press, 2010. Nominated.

Turtle in Paradise by Jennifer L. Holm. Semicolon review here. Nominated.

Countdown by Deborah Wiles. Semicolon review here. Nominated.

The Kneebone Boy by Ellen Potter. Nominated.

Fantasy:
The Curse of the Spider King by Thomas Wayne Batson and Christopher Hopper. Published by Thomas Nelson, November 3, 2009. Nominated.

Venom and Song by Thomas Wayne Batson and Christopher Hopper. Published by Thomas Nelson, July 13, 2010.

The Charlatan’s Boy by Jonathan Rogers. Published by Waterbrook Press, October 5, 2010. Nominated.

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins. Semicolon review here. Nominated.

The Sixty-Eight Rooms by Marianne Malone. Semicolon review here. Nominated.

On the Blue Comet by Rosemary Wells. Candlewick, 2010. Nominated.

Easy Readers/Early Chapter Books:
Anna Maria’s GIft by Janice Shefleman. Published by Random House, April, 2010. Nominated.

Picture Books:
Eight Days: A Story Of Haiti by Edwidge Danticat. Published by Orchard Books, September 1, 2010.

Poetry:
Zack! You’re Acting Zany: playful poems and riveting rhymes by Marty Nystrom and Steve Bjorkman. Published by Standard Publishing, March 1, 2010. Nominated.

MG/YA Nonfiction:
You Were Made to Make a Difference by Max Lucado and Jenna Lucado Bishop. Published by Thomas Nelson, September 14, 2010. Nominated.

More ideas from Jennifer and Dawn at 5 Minutes for Books.

I can’t nominate all of these, folks. Anyone can nominate one book for each category in the Cybils from now until October 15th. So get in there and do your nominating thing, especially if any of the above are your favorites.

Jump by Elisa Carbone

Oct1

On belay?
Belay on.
Climbing.
Climb on.

What would you do if you weren’t afraid?
Imagine it perfect.

Jump is my introduction to the sport of rock-climbing. Apparently, there are rock-climbing gyms and climbing shops where you buy gear with esoteric names and rocks and cliffs and routes to climb that have ratings and their own weird names (Swing Shift? Midnight Lightning?). Who knew such a world existed?

Anyway, our two protagonists, Critter, escapee from a mental hospital, and P.K., a runaway who just wants to avoid being sent to boarding school, find themselves hitchhiking across country to Nevada and then to California to find a place where they can share their mutual passion–rock-climbing. In the process, they, of course, discover another passion for each other, but there are issues that must be resolved. And the cops are chasing both Critter and P.K., seeking to return Critter to his drugged life in the hospital and P.K. into the arms of her parents-who-don’t-understand-me.

I’m making the book sound a bit trite and predictable, but it’s really anything but. Critter isn’t really crazy, or is he? He does read people’s emotions by the colored auras he sees surrounding them, and he makes things happen by visualizing them. And P.K. is a strong, independent, rock-climbing, kick you-know-what female, or maybe she’s just a girl who wants her daddy to listen to her and her mom to let her stay home. The parents of both young people were rather flat characters, not very comprehensible. But this story isn’t really about kids and parents; it’s about P.K. and Critter and their relationship and about trust and most of all about living in the present. Critter tells P.K. over and over that the present moment is all that’s real. The past can’t be changed; it’s subject to what Critter calls “the Law of Inevitability.” The future isn’t here, and most of the things we worry about happening in the future, won’t. So Now is all there is.

That’s the philosophy part of the book. The story part is your basic boy meets girl, problems, resolution. But it’s a good climb with some quirky, lovable characters.

Veiled Freedom by J.M. Windle

Sep30

Kabul, 2001—American forces have freed Afghanistan from the Taliban. Kites have returned to the skies. Women have removed their burqas. There is dancing in the streets.

Kabul, 2009—Suicide bombing, corruption in government, a thriving opium and heroin trade, Sharia law, and women oppressed and treated as slaves and property. Is this the Afghanistan, the free country, that American soldiers and Afghan freedom fighters gave their lives to secure?

In her exploration of the state of liberty and democracy in Afghanistan today, J.M. WIndle creates three characters who serve as examples of some of the conflicts and intricacies that exist in that war-torn country. Amy Mallory is a twenty-something Christian relief worker who’s experienced emergency situations around the world, but nothing like Afghanistan. Steve Wilson is a former Special Forces operative who now works for a private security company. His job is to protect the new Afghani Minister of the Interior, the person second in command to the president of Afghanistan. Jamil is a native Afghan with a troubled past. He goes to work for Amy’s NGO because he needs a job to be able to eat, but working for a woman, even an ex-patriate woman, has its challenges in Afghanistan.

This novel includes plenty of material to offend or discomfort ideologues. The teachings of Isa Masih (Jesus) and Muhammed are compared, and Muhammed comes up short. At the same time, American and European efforts to change the surface of Afghan society obviously fall far short and at times are counterproductive. Security expert Steve Wilson comes to the conclusion that we should just leave Afghanistan to the Afghans and allow chaos to ensue. Aid worker Amy Mallory decides to stay and try to help in spite of the severe restrictions on what she can do or say or offer. Jamil finds his own way to pursue freedom and justice, but the price may be his life.

I’ve read several other books, both fiction and nonfiction, set in Afghanistan, and this novel, from a Christian perspective, reinforces my view that Christian ministry in a Muslim culture is a difficult and costly calling. Although God can and will work anywhere, the Christian who attempts to demonstrate the love and mercy of Christ to Muslims will most likely find deep-seated opposition and spiritual warfare. In every culture, American, Arabian, Afghan, German, Chinese, or Australian, there are aspects of that culture that set themselves up in opposition to the gospel. In the United States some of those opposing forces are materialism and the lure of riches, the sexual saturation that permeates Western culture, and pride in our own accomplishments both individually and as a culture. In Afghanistan a lack of respect for women, moral self-righteousness, and the concept of honor within a closed society all combine to combat both political and spiritual freedom.

Veiled Freedom uses the vehicle of a political thriller to discuss some of these issues in both Western and Afghan culture and to explore at least one way in which the gospel of Jesus Christ might be able to infiltrate and transform Afghanistan. The ending is kind of a long shot, but with God all things are possible.

June Bug by Chris Fabry

Sep29

This one is supposed to be a take-off on my favorite book of all time, Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. Ummm, all I can say is I liked Les Miserables a lot better.

In this version, Jean Valjean is a man named John Johnson, and Cosette is a little girl named June Bug. Johnson and his assumed daughter June Bug travel the USA in their RV, seeing all the sights and parking in Walmart parking lots when they run out of money for campsites. There is no Inspector Javert, just a nice sheriff named Hadley Preston who wouldn’t hurt a flea or hunt down a thief. I thought there were a lot of holes in the plot, and June Bug, although somewhat endearing, is innocent and precocious in turn so that I kept having to look again to see how she was really supposed to be (nine years old). A single woman, who meets the pair in the Walmart parking lot and doesn’t know anything about them, invites father and daughter to live in her house while they’re waiting for a replacement part for the RV. I have my doubts that anyone with a lick of sense would extend such an invitation. John Johnson is too good to be true, and the real villain of the piece, whose name I won’t divulge, is way too bad to be quite believable –no redeeming qualities at all.

Anyway, I read to the end, but I’m just not recommending this novel, even though it was nominated for a Christy Award for Christian fiction last year. Maybe I missed something.

Becky’s Book Reviews: “I wish more of the story could have been told through June Bug’s perspective. We have a little bit of her story as seen through her own eyes. But the narrative shifts throughout the book to many different characters. What I did like was that most–if not all–of the characters we get to meet have some substance.”

Books, Movies, and Chinese Food: “The book is described as a modern version of Les Miserables. I could see the similarities but if you’re really looking for an adaptation, you’re not going to find it. I think the story holds up well on its own.”

Relz Reviewz: “‘June Bug’ is the very definition of bittersweet. As the final chapters reveal all the details of the truth Johnson kept hidden, my heart broke and tears flowed.”

So, yeah, they all liked it; the deficiency must be in my reading. If you want a “bittersweet” story of family intrigue and Christian suspense, check it out. But if you haven’t read Les Miserables, you really, really should before you spend reading time on June Bug.

Blood on the River: James Town 1607 by Elisa Carbone

Sep28

Ms. Carbone says she wrote this historical novel abut the founding of Jamestown partly because teachers and librarians asked her to do so. Apparently, there’s not much out there, fiction-wise, for young people set in Jamestown.

Blood on the River is the story of Samuel Collier, a street urchin with an attitude from the streets of London. Samuel was a real person about whom little or nothing is really known, so Ms. Carbone made up this story about him. It’s a good, adventurous, historically educational tale full of sound and fury and of course, blood. Samuel is flawed, but likable hero, servant to Captain John Smith. Samuel’s difficult childhood has taught him to fight for whatever he needs or wants and not to trust anyone. Life in Jamestown and especially the example of Captain Smith teach Samuel that in the New World everyone must work and work together in order to survive.

The book highlights the tension between the “gentlemen” settlers of Jamestown who were looking for gold and quick riches and those who were sent or came with the intention of making a new life for themselves. Tension and finally enmity also developed between the English settlers and the Native groups who were already resident in the land. Samuel, however, learns that he can avoid trouble by using his head and controlling his temper.

I started teaching my co-op class on American History and Literature on September 3rd, and if I had already read it I would have had this book on the reading list. I would recommend it for any group of young people (middle school to high school) who are studying this time period.

My U.S. history class was reading about Roanoke and Jamestown colonies this month, as I would guess many other U.S. history classes all over the nation are doing about now. The following books are from the children’s and young adult sections of the library, but I enjoyed them all. Actually, I find the best nonfiction in the children’s book area. Children’s authors seem to have honed the ability to explain history and science and other topics in economical but engaging prose. And children’s and young adult historical fiction usually emphasizes the history and the adventure rather than trying to work romance into every story.

Roanoke, the Lost Colony
The Lost Colony of Roanoke by Jean Fritz. Putnam, 2004.

Mystery of the Lost Colony by Lee Miller. Scholastic, 2007.

Roanoke The Lost Colony: An Unsolved Mystery from History by Heidi Stemple and Jane Yolen. Simon & Schuster, 2003. I tried to get this one, but my library system doesn’t have a copy. This series sounds like something I would really enjoy since it includes several other “mysteries of history.”

Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America
1607, A New Look at Jamestown by Karen E. Lange. Photographs by Ira Block. National Geographic, 2007. Published in honor of the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown, this book features National Geographic-style photographs taken on site at Jamestown Rediscovery, a working archeological site where new discoveries about the life and history of the Jamestown settlers continue to be made. The most important change in the modern views of the history of Jamestown comes from tree ring research that shows that the colonists’ descent into chaos and starvation may have been due to drought more than to laziness and ineptitude. John Rolfe’s superior tobacco plants imported from Trinidad and the arrival of 147 “Maids for VIrginia” in 1619 may have saved the day and the colony.

John Smith Escapes Again! by Rosalyn Schanzer. Another title from National Geographic (2006), but with a totally different feel and character, Schanzer’s biography of John Smith brings out the legendary qualities of a man who lived big and told even bigger stories. “In his day, John Smith was probably the greatest escape artist on the planet. He escaped from danger over and over, and not only from Indians, but from angry mobs, slave drivers, French pirates, and even the deep blue sea.” The illustrations are cartoon-like with lots of detail, and the text is exciting to match an exciting life. This one is my favorite of all the books on this list.

The Double Life of Pocahontas by Jean Fritz. An historically accurate account of the life of Pocahontas, the Indian princess who moved between the worlds of her own Powhatan tribe and that of the British settlers in Jamestown.

Written in Bone: Buried Lives of Jamestown and Colonial Maryland by Sally M. Walker. In Written in Bone, Ms. Walker accompanies forensic anthropologist Douglas Owsley, a scientist at the Smithsonian Institution, at his invitation, as he and colleagues from several related disciplines study the remains of some of the Jamestown settlers and of other early colonials who lived in the Chesapeake region of Maryland. Full Semicolon review here.

The World of Captain John Smith by Genevieve Foster. I really like the series of books by Ms. Foster that take a time period and focus on the life of a specific person from that time while also telling about what was going on all over the world in history.

Who’s Saying What in Jamestown, Thomas Savage? by Jean Fritz. 13 year old Thomas Savage arrived in Jamestown in January, 1608. In this book, Jean Fritz tells Thomas’s story in her inimitable style.

A Fictional Look at Jamestown and Roanoke
Cate of the Lost Colony by Lisa Klein. Catherine, one of Queen Elizabeth’s ladies in waiting and an admirer of Elizabeth’s favorite Sir Walter Raleigh, is banished to Raleigh’s colony at Roanoke. Semicolon review here. YA fiction.

Sabotaged by Margaret Peterson Haddix. Simon & Schuster, 2010. I read the first book in Haddix’s Missing series, Found, but I have yet to read the second book, Sent, or the third, Sabotaged. Sabotaged, I am told, features a missing child who turns out to be Virginia Dare. Middle grade/YA fiction.

The Lyon Saga, a trilogy about Roanoke by M. L. Stainer; the first volume is The Lyon’s Roar. Circleville Press, 1997. I read about this trilogy at The Fourth Musketeer. YA fiction.

Our Strange New Land: Elizabeth’s Jamestown Colony Diary by Patricia Hermes. Sequels are The Starving Time and Season of Promise. These three books are a part of Scholastic’s My America series for younger readers.

The Serpent Never Sleeps: A Novel of Jamestown and Pocahontas by Scot O’Dell. Serena Lynn follows her beloved Anthony Foxcroft to America to make a life in Jamestown. Protected by a magical serpent ring given to her by King James I himself, Serena will dare anything to follow her dreams. Later in the book, she becomes friends with the Indian girl Pocahontas and learns what it means to truly be a citizen of the New World. O’Dell is always good, and this particular novel, although not his best, is quite readable and informative. I got a fair idea of what King James I might have been like, and I’m not thinking I would want to be anywhere near his court.

The Corn Raid: A Story of the Jamestown Settlement by James Lincoln Collier. An indentured servant becomes friends with an Indian boy, but plans by the Jamestown colonists to steal the Indians’ corn threaten to derail and destroy the friendship.

Winter of the Dead by Elizabeth Massie. Nathaniel and Richard accompany Captain John Smith to Jamestown, and they find not gold, but rather hardship and starvation as they struggle along with the other colonists to survive their first winter in the new world.

Blood on the River by Elisa Carbone. Karate Kid read this book, too.